Unfinished Business

yet he asks for everything.”
    Gabriella smiled again. “It is another skill they have.”
    “I’ve learned things about myself, about my background, my family, that are very difficult to accept. I’m not sure if I give this man what he wants, for now, that I won’t be cheating him and myself in the bargain.”
    Gabriella was silent a moment. “You know my story, it has been well documented. After I had been kidnapped, and my memory was gone, I looked into my father’s face and didn’t know him. Into my brothers’ eyes and saw the eyes of strangers. However much this hurt me, it hurt them only more. But I had to find myself, discover myself in the most basic of ways. It’s very frightening, very frustrating. I’m not a patient or a temperate person.”
    Vanessa managed another smile. “I’ve heard rumors.”

    With a laugh, Gabriella picked up her wine and sipped again. “At last I recognized myself. At last I looked at my family and knew them. But differently,” she said, gesturing. “It’s not easy to explain. But when I knew them again, when I loved them again, it was with a different heart. Whatever flaws they had, whatever mistakes they had made, however they had wounded me in the past, or I them, didn’t matter any longer.”
    “You’re saying you forgot the past.”
    She gave a quick shake of her head, and her diamonds sizzled. “The past wasn’t forgotten. It can’t be. But I could see it through different eyes. Falling in love was not so difficult after being reborn.”
    “Your husband is a fortunate man.”
    “Yes. I remind him often.” She rose. “I’d better leave you to prepare.”
    “Thank you.”
    Gabriella paused at the door. “Perhaps on my next trip to America you will invite me to spend a day in your home.”
    “With the greatest pleasure.”
    “And I’ll meet this man.”
    “Yes.” Vanessa’s laugh was quick and easy. “I think you will.”
    When the door closed, she sat again. Very slowly she turned her head, until she faced herself in the mirror, ringed by bright lights. She saw dark green eyes, a mouth that had been carefully painted a deep rose. A mane of chestnut hair. Pale skin over delicate features. She saw a musician. And a woman.
    “Vanessa Sexton,” she murmured, and smiled a little.
    Suddenly she knew why she was there, why she would walk out onstage. And why, when she was done, she would go home.
    Home.

     
    It was too damn hot for a thirty-year-old fool to be out in the afternoon sun playing basketball. That was what Brady told himself as he jumped up and jammed another basket.
    Even though the kids were out of school for the summer, he had the court, and the park, to himself. Apparently children had more sense than a lovesick doctor.
    The temperature might have taken an unseasonable hike into the nineties, and the humidity might have decided to join it degree for degree, but Brady figured sweating on the court was a hell of a lot better than brooding alone at home.
    Why the hell had he taken the day off?
    He needed his work. He needed his hours filled.
    He needed Vanessa.
    That was something he was going to have to get over. He dribbled into a fast layup. The ball rolled around the rim, then dropped through.
    He’d seen the pictures of Vanessa. They’d been all over the damn television, all over the newspaper. People in town hadn’t been able to shut up about it—about her—for two days.
    He wished he’d never seen her in that glittery white dress, her hair flaming down her back, those gorgeous hands racing over the keys, caressing them, drawing impossible music from them. Her music, he thought now. The same composition she’d been playing that day he’d walked into her house to find her waiting for him.
    Her composition. She’d finished it.
    Just as she’d finished with him.
    He scraped his surgeon’s fingers on the hoop.
    How could he expect her to come back to a one-horse town, her high school sweetheart? She had royalty cheering her. She could move from palace to palace for the price of a song. All he had to offer her was a house in the woods, an ill-mannered dog and the occasional baked good in lieu of fee.
    That was bull, he thought viciously as the ball rammed onto the backboard and careened off. No one would ever love her the way he did, the way he had all of his damn life. And if he ever got his hands on her again, she’d hear about it. She’d need an otolaryngologist by the time her ears stopped ringing.
    “Stuff